CSBG Archive

A Year of Cool Comics – Day 74

Here is the latest in our year-long look at one cool comic (whether it be a self-contained work, an ongoing comic or a run on a long-running title that featured multiple creative teams on it over the years) a day (in no particular order whatsoever)! Here‘s the archive of the moments posted so far!

Today we take a look at Andy Diggle and Pasqual Ferry’s Adam Strange…

Enjoy!

When you look back upon it, this Adam Strange mini-series was really quite remarkable. It served to both jump start DC’s cosmic characters AND jump start Pasqual Ferry’s career as a penciler (it took awhile for the greatness of Diggle to be fully appreciated).

The concept of the series is that Adam Strange (the Earthman who travels between Earth and the planet Rann, where he is the protector of Rann) is on Earth (Strange is forced to spend half of his time on Earth and half on Rann due to a teleportation device called the Zeta Beam) when he learns that Rann was destroyed. His wife and child were on the planet, so he is, naturally, despondent.

However, he discovers that Rann was actually “stolen” before it was destroyed, so he sets out to discover what happened to Rann (and his family).

The best thing about the series is that Diggle really understood why Adam Strange was different – why he was worthy of being the protector of an entire alien planet – Strange was a seemingly normal human, except for his one power – the power of ingenuity.

This is spotlighted in a brilliant sequence when some bounty hunters come to see if he knows what happened to Rann…

As you can see, Ferry’s artwork is spectacular.

He was quickly chosen to do one of Grant Morrison’s Seven Soldiers mini-series, and then Marvel wooed him away and he has worked on high profile projects for Marvel ever since (currently doing Ender’s Game stuff).

In the process of finding out what happened to Rann, Adam encounters a wide variety of other DC cosmic characters, and effectively jump starts the DC cosmic cast of characters, as a lot of them had been pretty much been in limbo since the cancellation of the first volume of REBELS.

The Omega Men, Vril Dox – lots of great characters were brought out by Diggle and used, and used WELL!

The only downside of this series is that DC then promptly used this mini-series to set up Infinite Crisis and then Diggle was off of the book, which was a darn shame.

But now Diggle is at Marvel Comics, doing a great job on Daredevil and just coming off a great run on Thunderbolts!

Still, Adam Strange: Planet Heist is a great book (even with the annoying lead-in cliffhanger), and well worth picking up!

Oh, I almost forgot colorist Dave McCaig – he kicked ass on this series!

” Ferry is probably the only artist I get huge fanboy jitters about. Super-looking forward to him and Matt Fraction on Thor. I need to go get the Ender’s Game comics… ”

I agree, Mark. He’s also one of the few artists at the Big Two who draws in a fashion that trusts computer coloring, using a minimum of lines and letting the colorist fill in the values in a way that works.

chad

loved the art work. in the story even though in the end it wound up being part of infitie crisis and the rann thanagar war. other wise a good story. showed how adam strange can be done with the right team.on board

Alpha Centauri went supernova? So an ultra-bright star is visible next to the sun during the day? Has it had any effect on the electromagnetic spectrum? Does anybody think it’s a sign of the coming Apocalypse?

I guess this happened only in the DC world, because it would be front-page news in the real world.

Enero

After I got the Losers by DIggle (and Jock) I was looking for anything by him. I heard about this when you featured it in the Year of Cool Moments. And I’m not a Grant Morrison fan but I bought Mister Miracle for Ferry’s art. For the talent on this and how good it ended up being, you’d think DC would’ve tried to let more people know about it.

It’s a shame when people this good, do such a good job on low profile work.

Almost as bad as when people this good, do such a horrible job on high profile work (All-Star Batman and Robin, 1985).

DanCJ

Dale

Adam Strange had actually returned to Earth to put all his affiairs in order as Sardath had come up with a way for him to stay permanently on Rann. When the Zeta beam didnt appear as scheduled he got worried and sent Superman to check things out.

What made the series great for me was the wall to wall action from the first issue onwards. Adam became obsessed in finding out exactly what happened to Rann.